Chemical and biological weapons during World War 2

[Klink77]

I have a question about World War 2 that I have never had fully answered by anyone. Why did neither Axis or Allies not use chemical or biological weapons en masse, ala World War I? I have read about the Japanese using all sort of chemical and biological weapons against the Chinese civilians and military although not nearly as extensive as WWI. I also have read about the fear of retaliation in Europe due to vast stockpiles of chemical weapons on either side.

What stopped countries like the United States from using them in the Pacific? Could you imagine a better place for it, strategically thinking? Marines conducting island operations, islands that have a usually small civilian population, and mainly occupied by enemy Japanese soldiers. Wouldn't that be a perfect scenario to engulf a whole island with all sorts of chemical weapons and come in and mop up the survivors? Instead of what historically happened. Of course, I do understand the Japanese would have gas masks and other breathing apparatus, but how long would those last and would they even be prepared for that type of attack? Propably not, right?

I know both Axis and Allies had delivery methods for checmical and biological attacks, so a lack of delivery can't be a plausible reason. If retaliation was the only reason, I would think the convential Air bombings did more damage to countries like Germany and Japan more than chemicals ever could. So why would they be afraid of chemical weapons then?

Germany would also be a perfect country for wanting to initiate chemical warfare, they had the most avanced delivery method for chemical weapons than anyone in the V-1 and V-2 rockets. You mean to tell me that as crazy and evil as Hitler was he wasn't willing to seek revenge with chemical weapons against the UK or especially the Soviet Union? I just find it really hard to believe.

I hope someone can explain or point me to an article, book, or whatever type of information that can help me figure out this aspect of World War 2 that still bewilders me.

[Son of Damian]

Chemical/Bio weapons weren't used because of the bad memories from WW1. Hitler was gassed during WW1 so he knew it's horrors first hand. The Geneva conventions banned there use, so the side that used them first would have handed there opponents a huge propaganda victory. There is also a stigma about there use, as an act of desperation; we can't break the dead lock on the western front, we will use them if the Germans mount an invasion etc.

The US had plans to possible gas Japanese cities prior to Operation Olympic. And for the use of gas as a way to easily deal with Japanese bunker/tunnel complexes after the invasion. This could have been highly effective as gas tends to drain into low pressure areas like trenches, bunkers, tunnels etc; and the low light conditions could hamper detection if you weren't expecting gas.

[a_very_ex_STAB]

IIRC the Western Allies did keep stocks of chemical weapons in various theatres of war in case the Axis powers used them.

This came to light in the Italian port of Bari after German aircraft bombed an American freighter in the harbour which was carrying a cargo of mustard gas bombs. I can't recall the numbers but apparently there were lots of casualties.

The British also developed anthrax for use in biological warfare.

[Laworkerbee]

IIRC the Western Allies did keep stocks of chemical weapons in various theatres of war in case the Axis powers used them.

This came to light in the Italian port of Bari after German aircraft bombed an American freighter in the harbour which was carrying a cargo of mustard gas bombs. I can't recall the numbers but apparently there were lots of casualties.

The British also developed anthrax for use in biological warfare.

Is there some British Isle that is still off limits due to Anthrax testing?

[Lov3ll]

Is there some British Isle that is still off limits due to Anthrax testing?

Yeah Gruinard Island p-)

[Mamont]

So far it was claimed, that Germany did use biological weapons during ww2, though only once - in Italy, mosquitos infected with malaria. And was planning bacteriological war agains SU from 1943. But advancement of SU prevented that.
Biological agents were not used because at that time it was almost impossible to predict spread and possible damage to own troops and population. Chemicals on the other hand were more controllable, but to achieve any great succes they must be used massively. And while Germany did not have the means to utilise them effectively, Allies simply had the means to have job done in a more conventional way, without dirtying their hands with such inhuman tools and loosing any possible popular support they may gain. Geneva convention was only 20 years earlyer, and memory about ww1 was still fresh.

[wiking]

The allies also tested Gas on Australian troops in Australia, to test the effect of gas in tropical areas.

[Mamont]

During ww2? Any details?

[wiking]

Dont have many details, but about 1000 Aussie volunteers were exposed to mustard gas, because the allies knew Japan had used gas in china atleast, and needed to know more about how mustard gas would work in the tropics.

I think they found that Mustard gas was 25% more potent in a tropical environment.

Think it happened\started in 1942 BTW

[Mastermind]

All sides had fairly bad experience with gas in WWI. Gas delivered by artillery was never effective enough to generate a breakthrough annhilation of enemy forces. Experienced enemy suffering a gas attack seldom panicked and the encroaching troops suffered just as many casualties as the target troops from the gas. In a more specific example, the Germans were hugely dissappointed to find out that some Russian brigades the Germans had heavily targeted with gas never even realized they were being gassed due to wind, humidity and terrain dispersing the gas before it could be effective. So, really, everyone was leery of using gas because there were so many uncontrollable variable involved with it. It was not a weapon commanders could reliably depend on.

As for bio weapons, there were some experiments done by all sides. Some more mundane and some absolutely horriffic. But, no one really came to a dynamic discovery that would allow extensive or decisive use of such weapons...they were as dangerous to your own troops as the enemy since no one really had effective cures for them.

The Pacific fighting was not necessarily a better field for chem/bio weapons. The Japanese were famous for "digging in" and fortifying their island strong holds. It had been proven in WWI that most chemical attacks were miserable failures against such fortifications since little gas would penetrate poorly ventilated spaces resulting in low casualties for expensive weapons use. Besides, to then invade onto of an area already contaminated posed a serious risk to your own troops. Also, most ocean islands are continually bathed in breezes that would quickly disperse gases. Basically, again, the conditions that make for a "successful" gas attack seldom existed.

Biological weapons research today has found that there probably is no such thing as a "Perfect Disease"...disease just does not work the way it is often depicted in movies...there is no "Andromeda Strain" type of bug out there (yet)...even Ebola and a deadly strain of air borne Hemorragic Fever can't meet the requirement since they kill their victims too quickly for them to spread enough to do serious damage...the most deadly disease ever visited on the human specis on Earth was the 1919 Swine Flu epidemic...which some suspect was originated in Asians being brought to fight for the allies in France in 1917. the deadly virus eventually petered itself out...some suspect more than fifty million died from the disease world wide, and even so, it had little relative effect on the fighting strength of any nation since it killed every combatants' soldiers equally.

So, you can see these weapons, though scary, are of little tactical use and are of absolutely no strategic use. So why take the risk and expense of using them? It seems all sides engaged in WWII understood that.

[Klink77]

Thank you for all your replies. I think I can now understand why widespread use of chemical or biological weapons did not occur. I must really thank Mastermind, you gave some very specific information that explains the whole situation more clearly.

Now here's a question, do you ever think there could be a resurgence of chemical warfare on the scale of WWI? I know Sadaam had no qualms about using them against Iran and his own people; but how about western nations?
Too inhumane and immoral to the West I suppose? Also, like Mastermind said, the more conventional weapons were far more effective and "humane" than chemical or biological weapons.

[Amethystfretchen]

found this:

Source:"A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman (NY: Hill and Wang/Noonday Press, 1982) ISBN 0-8090-5471-X http://www.beyond-the-illusion.com/files/Politics/General/shrod.radio

OPERATION ANTHROPOID:
THE GERM-BOMB ASSASSINATION OF REINHARD HEYDRICH

[Excerpted and condensed from "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman
(NY: Hill and Wang/Noonday Press, 1982), pp. 88-94.]

According to his own account, Paul Fildes made his most spectacular contribution to the Second World War on 27 May 1942 on a street corner in Prague in Czechoslovakia.

Ever since the establishment of the bacteriological warfare wing at Porton [Down], Fildes had been working on 'B T X' - the botulinal toxins, recently described in a World Health Organization report as 'being among the most toxic substances known to man.' BTX, more commonly known as botulism, generally appears as a particularly virulent form of food poisoning, with an average mortality rate of 60 per cent. Although there is no official confirmation, by 1941 it appears that Fildes had succeeded in turning BTX into a weapon; the British code-named it 'X'.

Chemical and biological weapons have long been favourite tools of spies: the ties between Porton, Camp Detrick in America, and the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Office of Stregic Services [OSS] were extremely strong... Both Polish and Russian partisans used biological weapons in sabotage operations against the Germans. In December 1942, for example, the Gestapo discovered a germ warfare arsenal in a four-roomed Warsaw house used by the Polish underground. They reported to Himmler the discovery of 'three flasks of typhus bacilli.' 20 lb of arsenic had also passed through the use. A few days later, Himmler showed Hitler a captured NKVD order instructing the Russian partisans to use arsenic to poison German occupation troops. The raids on the Warsaw house apparently failed to prevent the Poles from continuing to use germ weapons. The Combined Chiefs of Staff learned from the Polish Liaison Officer in Washington, Colonel Mitkiewiczm, that in the first four months of 1943 426 Germans had been poisoned by the Polish underground; that seventy-seven 'poisoned parcels' had been sent to Germany; and that 'a few hundred' Nazis had been assassinated by means of 'typhoid fever microbes and typhoid fever lice.'

Against this background it is therefore not surprising that the British Secret Service should have turned to Fildes for help when, in October 1941, they began to plan Operation Anthropoid. Its object: the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

It was an almost suicidal mission for those who undertook it, but one which the British regarded as of overriding importance. Heydrich had already acquired a fearsome reputation as the ruthless head of the SICHERHEITSDIENST (S.D.), the Nazi security service, through which he ran the counter-intelligence peration against British agents in occupied Europe. He was said to be Hitler's personal choice as the man to succeed him as Fuhrer, and in September 1941 he appointed him REICHSPROTECHTOR of Bohemia and Moravia... The British Secret Service decided to have Heydrich killed.

At ten o'clock on the night of 29 December 1941, a four-engined Halifax bomber took off from Tempsford aerodrome. To help it make the long, hazardous flight over occupied Europe, the RAF laid on a diversionary bombing raid to draw off German radar and fighter squardons. Four and half hours after take-off, seven Czechs, in semi-moonlight, parachuted into the snow-covered hills near the small Bahemian town of Lidice.

The men had all trained at Cholmondely Castle in Cheshire and in an SOE Special Training School in Scotland. With them they carried British arms, wireless and cipher equipment. Two weapons in particular were handled with extra care. They were British No. 73 Hand Anti-tank grenades. Normally these were 9 1/2 inches long and weighed 4 pounds. The grenades the Czechs carried were special conversions, consisting of the top third of the grenade, with adhesive tape thickly binding the open end. The grenades each weighed just over 1 pound. It now seems likely that they had been personally prepared by Fildes at Porton Down, and each contained a lethal filling of X.

The 'Anthropoids', led by Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, went to earth with the help of the Czech underground for five months, building up a detailed picture of Heydrich's movements. Astonishingly for so high a Nazi leader he rarely travelled with an armed escort. On 23 May 1942, by a stroke of good fortune, the Anthropoids learned where Heydrich would be in four days' time. At 9:30 AM on the morning of the 27th they took up positions on a hairpin bend near the Troja Bridge in a suburb of Prague on the busy route to Heydrich's fortress HQ at Hardcany Castle. Precise details of what followed differ, but in all there were probably six assassins: four men armed with sub-machine guns and grenades, one with a mirror to flash a signal when Heydrich's car rounded the bend, and Rela Fafek, Gradcik's girlfriend, who was to drive a car ahead of Heydrich: if he was coming along unescorted she would wear a hat.

At 10:31, complete with hat, she drove round the corner. Seconds later came the mirror signal. Grabcik strode into the middle of the road and aimed his sub-machine gun at the bend. Heydrich's open-topped green Mercedes came sailing round the corner, but as Grabcik tried to open fire his gun jammed. As the car slowed, Herdrich screamed at his chauffeur to put his foot on the accelerator, but the driver, a last-minute replacement, kept slamming on the brakes. It was at this point that Kubis hurled one of Fildes' grenades.

Heydrich had just risen to his feet in the now-stationary car when the grenade exploded with a force powerful enough to shatter all the windows in a passing tram. Although it missed the Mercedes, the blast tore off the door. Splinters from the grenade embedded themselves in Heydrich's body. Like 'the central figure in a scene out of any Western' Heydrich leapt into the road, shouting and screaming, then suddenly dropped his revolver. Clutching his right hip he staggered backwards and collapsed. The gunmen escaped.

Heydrich, in considerable pain and bleeding from his back, was driven, fully conscious, in a commandeered van to the nearby Bulovka Hospital. The doctor on duty in the surgery department was Vladimir Snajdr.

At first sight the wound did not seem dangerous... [he recalled] Professor Dick hurried in. He was a German doctor whom the Nazis had appointed to our hospital...
He tried to see whether the kidney was touched: no, all seemed well for Heydrich. And the same applied to his spinal column... The X-ray showed something in the wound, perhaps a bomb splinter. Or a piece of coachwork... The patient's state called for a full-scale surgical operation: one rib was broken, the thoracic cage was open, a bomb splinter was in the spleen, the diaphragm was pierced... I did not see him again. But Dr. Dick said that he was coming along very well. His death surprised us all...

Heydrich's sudden collapse--from apparently only minor injuries to coma and subsequent death--may have baffled the doctors, but in retrospect matches completely the symptomology of BTX poisoning. After an initial period of calm, lasting perhaps for a day or so, the victim lapses into a progressive paralysis which fails to respond to treatment. As X went to work on Heydrich's central nervous system, the doctors could only stand by helplessly as their famous patient succumbed to the clasic symptoms of poisoning by BTX:
a combination of extreme weakness, malaise, dry skin, dilated and unresponsive pupils, blurred vision, dry coated tongue and mouth, and dizziness when upright. As the patient becomes worse, he develops a progressive muscular weakness with facial paralysis, and weakness of arms, legs and repiratory muscles. He may die of respiratory failure unless artifical respiration is applied. There may be associated cardiac arrest or complete vasomotor collapse.

The patient generally either dies or recovers within seven days. A week after the ambush, on 4 June 1942, Heydrich died. Dr. Snajdr recalled that the offical diagnosis of the cause of Heydrich's death was septicaemia. Blood transfusions could do nothing. Professor Hamperl, head of the German Institute of Pathology, and Professor Weyrich, head of the German Institute of Forensic Medicine, drew up a joint report on their medical conclusions. Among other things it said, 'Death occurred as a consequence of lesions in the vital parenchymatous organs caused by _bacteria_and_possibly__by_poisons_carried_into_them_by_the_bomb_splinters_ [author's italics] and desposited chiefly in the pleura, the diaphragm and the tissues in the neighborhood of the spleen, there agglomerating and multiplying.'
That is all I can tell you.

Heydrich's coffin was borne in state in a black-creped train into Berlin, escorted by Adolf Hitler's SS guard. The Fuhrer laid a wreath on the grave of 'the man with the iron heart'. 'The German intelligence service,' one historian has written, 'would never really recover from the murder of Heydrich.'...

The Germans launched a period of terror. The entire town of Lidice was razed in reprisal: its male population shot, its women and children carried away in trucks. 10,000 Czechs were arrested. The Anthropoids were hunted down and eventually trapped in the crypt of a Greek Orthodox Church in Prague. Kubis and Gabcik were both killed. Yet, wrote General Moravec, one of the planners of the mission, 'our hope that the Czech people would react to German pressure with counter-pressure did not materialise...' On the day that Heydrich died 'fifty thousand Czech workers demonstrated against the British-inspired act in Prague.'

...There is no *written* evidence of Fildes' involvement in Heydrich's death. The relevant official files are still closed. When asked to comment, Porton Down could only reply that they had no record of this incident; if Fildes was involved, they added, they thought it highly unlikely that any record would have been made. [FN: Authors' interview with Dr. Rex Watson, 21 July 1981.] We have therefore only the circumstantial evidence which points to the use of biological weapon--and the claims of Fildes himself.

The secret of X in Heydrich's murder might have died with the Anthropoids themselves had it not been for Fildes. The Times [of London] was right when it spoke of a streak of vanity in his character: he made a point of telling a number of colleagues what he had done. Two senior scientists involved in Allied germ warfare have privately confirmed that Fildes told them he 'had a hand' in the death of Heydrich. To a young American biologist, Alvin Pappenheimer--later Professor of Microbiology at Harvard--Fildes was even more melodramatic. Heydrich's murder, he told Pappenheimer, 'was the first notch on my pistol.'

[Amethystfretchen]

Some slightly ot post-WW2/Cold War stuff. Source same link as above.

U.S. & BRITISH BIO-WAR TESTING ON CIVILIAN POPULATIONS

[Excerpted and condensed from "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman (NY: Hill and Wang/Noonday Press, 1982), pp. 155-171.]


[In the late 1940s and early 1950s, to discover whether attacks of gas sprayed from ships or aircraft] were practical propositions, the British, Canadians and Americans collaborated in a succession of experiments. After preliminary meterological research to discover how clouds of bacteria might behave at altitude, they began a series of mock attacks.

The details of many of the experiments, which effected the lives of millions of peole, are still classified. It is known, however, that in 1948 the British War Office conducted an exercise known as Operation Pandora, to determine the vulnerability of the United Kingdom to 'weapons of mass destruction', the now accepted form of words for atomic and biological weapons. In the winter of the same year ships of the Royal Navy carrying British, Canadian and American microbiologists were sent to the Caribbean for Operation Harness. Over thirty years later, the results of Operation Harness are said to contain 'information, the disclosure of which is presumed to cause identifiable damage to national security.' Operations Harness is commonly thought to have been an exercise in which harmless bacteria were released to simulate a germ attack. In fact real germ weapons were used. Nor was Operation Harness unique. There were at least two other exercises in the Caribbean in which real diseases were tested. They were code-named Operations Ozone and Negation and took place in the winters of 1953 and 1954. Several thousand animals were brought from Porton Down [the British CBW facility first opened during World War I] and tethered to rafts at sea some miles off the Bahamas, which was then a British colony. The microbiologists watched through binoculars, as from upwind clouds of bacteria were released to drift over the animals. The diseases tested are thought to have included anthrax, brucellosis and tularemia. The corpses of the infected animals were burned at sea.

While these tests showed the relative virulence of the diseases under examination, they did not solve the central problem of how easy it would be to attack a large city or military base. Experiments with harmless bacteria soon after the war had shown how easy it was for germs to penetrate the interior of a sealed ship, but now attacks were needed against civilian targets. Over the next two decades there would be over 200 experiments in the United States alone in which military and civilian targets, including whole cities, would be attacked with imitation biological weapons. The tests were conducted in total secrecy. If inquisitive officials asked questions they were told the army was conducting experiments with smokescreens to protect the city from radar detection. The targets of the attacks ranged from isolated rural communities to entire cities, including New York and San Francisco.

One of the earliest experiments took place in San Francisco in 1950. The Pentagon believed it might be possible for a Soviet submarine to slip into an American harbour, release a cloud of bacteria, and disappear before the victims of the attack had even begun reporting to hospital. San Francisco, the headquarters of the Sixth Army and much of the Pacific fleet, seemed a likely target for such an attack. Between 20 and 26 September 1950, the theory was tested by two US Navy minesweepers steaming up and down outside the Golden Gate Bridge. On board the naval vessels' crewmen released clouds of a spray contaminated with BACILLUS GLOBIGII and SERRATIA MARCESCENS, two supposedly harmless bacteria. The Serratia marcescens strain, code-named '8 UK' had been developed at Porton Down during the Second World War because when incubated it turned red, making it very easily identifiable when used in biological warfare experiments.

There were six mock attacks on the city. In their report later the scientists concluded that 117 square miles of the San Francisco area had been contaminated, and that almost everyone in the city had inhaled the bacteria. 'In other words,' they wrote, 'nearly every one of the 800,000 people in San Francisco exposed to the cloud at normal breathing rate...inhaled 5000 or more particle. Any other area having a steady wind and a degree of atmospheric stability comparable to San Francisco is vulnerable to a similar type of atack, and there are many such areas in the US and elsewhere.' The point had been proved.

But the San Francisco test was only one of many. In 1951, American Navy personnel deliberately contaminate ten wooden boxes with Serratia marcescens, Bacillus globigii and ASPERGILLUS FUMIGATUS before they were shipped from a supply depot in Pennsylvania to the navy base in Norfolk, Virginia. The tests were designed to establish how easily disease might be spread among the people employed to handle the boxes atthe supply depot. Of the three infectious bacteria, Aspergillus fumigatus had been
specificaly chosen because black workers at the base would be particularly susceptible to it.

In 1953, after further tests spraying supposedly harmless chemicals and bacteria off the United States coast, the Chemical Corps travelled north to spray the Canadian city of Winnepeg. City officials were told that 'an invisible smokescreen' was being laid over the city. (A similar excuse had been used in tests in Minneapolis, where councillors were told that a smokescreen was being laid to protect the city from radar detection.) There were further tests at Stony Mountain Manitoba, where the experimenters ran into unexpected problems. According to their report, 'cattle in the area levelled many of the sampler stakes, and considerable time was lost in relocating them...(and) there was no adequate defense against the hoardes of mosquitoes present in this rural area.' How the
scientists survived this biological attack is not recorded.

The British contribution to an understanding of how germ attacks might be carried out was considerable, although Porton Down carried out far fewer such tests. Much of the early American work on how clouds might drift over cities was based on the results of experiments conducted by Porton scientists in which they released smoke clouds in built up areas of Salisbury, Wiltshire, just down the road from the Microbiological Research Establishment, and at Southampton in Hampshire.

The extreme secrecy which characterizes British defense matters makes it impossible at this stage to build up a full picture of British tests, since many are still classified. However, it is known that in 1952 ships of the Royal Navy released clouds of bacteria off the west coast of Scotland...
During the summer of 1952, and again during 1953, the Ben Lomond, a Royal Navy tank transport vessel based in the port of Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis, regularly set off for a point some six miles off the coast.

But unlike the San Francisco experiments in which supposedly harmless bacteria were used, the Ben Lomond carried canisters of disease. The patterns of the Scottish tests, code-named Operations Cauldron and Hesperus, was similar to those carried out in the Bahamas [i.e.-using animals on rafts]... Several thousand guinea-pigs, mice, rabbits, and about one hundred monkeys were killed during these tests, which continued for weeks at a time...

Details of these experiments are still not publicly available, and so nothing is known of the particular diseases under investigation...

In the United States similar experiments continued throughout the sixties. Perhaps the most spectacular simulated attack took place in 1966 when the Chemical Corps Special Operations Division [based at Fort Detrick] decided to mount a biological attack on New York City. The attack was carried out in strictest secrecy, the experimenters carrying false letters certifying that they represented an industrial research organization. The plan was to discover how easy it would be to poison a city by releasing germs into the underground railway tunnels. Army agents positioned themselves on the pavement above the gratings in the roofs of the New York Subway and sprayed 'harmless bacteria' into the stations. Occassionally the clouds would fall onto passengers waiting for trains, but 'when the clouds engulfed people, they brushed their clothes, looked up at the grating, and walked on', one of the agents recalled [FN: Documents quoted in Washington Post, 23 April 1980.]

The army agents concentrated on the Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue subway lines, while other team members were sent with sampling devices to the extremities of the underground railway network. Within minutes the turbulence caused by the trains would carry the bacteria thorughout the tunnel system. Another technique used by the Special Operations menwas to travel on sobway trains carrying an apprently normal light bulb which was in fact filled with bacteria. When no-one was looking, the light bulb would be dropped onto the tracks in the middle of a darkened tunnel. They reported later that this was 'an easy and effective method for covert contamination of a segment of a subway line.' the research team concluded that if anyone chose to carry out such an attack on New York, or any of the cities of the Soviet Union, Europe or South America with an underground railway network, thousands, possibly millions would swamp the hospitals and bring the health service to a standstill...

The last tests took place in November 1969. During their entire twenty year duration, little or nothing had been admitted about their true purpose.

...In October 1950 the Secretary for Defense accepted a proposal to build a factory to manufacture disease. Congress secretly voted ninety million dollars, to be spent renovating a Second World War Arsenal near the small cotton town of Pine Bluff, in the mid-west [sic] state of Arkansas. The new biological warfare plant had ten storeys, three of them built underground. It was equipped with ten fermentors for the mass production of bacteria at short notice, although the plant was never used to capacity. Local people in the town of Pine Bluff had some idea of the purpose of the new army factory being built down the road, but in general there was, as
the Pentagon put it later, 'a reluctance to publicize the program.'

The first biological weapons [to be produced there] were ready the following year, although they were designed to attack not humans but plants...

The United States had established the first peace-time biological weapon production line... [T]he main objective was the development of a weapon to kill people. The ideal biological agent had changed little from the days of Allied research during the Second World War.

It should be a disease against which there is no natural immunity. It should be highly infectious, and yet the enemy should not be able to produce the enemy should not be able to produce a vaccine against it or be able to cure the disease with the medical facilities available to him. And from a military point of view, it should be a disease which was easy to reproduce, yet hardy enough to survive and reproduce itself outside the laboratory.

Four diseases looked the most suitable as weapons:

ANTHRAX: The wartime tests carried out by the Britsh and Americans had shown anthrax to be an extremely hardy agent: the entire island of Gruinard [site of wartime testing of British anthrax bombs] was likely to be contaminated for the rest of the century. Although not necessarily fatal, there was still no effective immunization available. Originally coded 'N'.

BRUCELLOSIS: Otherwise known as Undulant Fever, by the end of the war, Brucellosis had been in advanced stages of development. Since it was rarely fatal, it was now considered as a possible 'humane' biological weapon. Orginally coded 'US'.

TULAREMIA: Like Brucellosis, which primarily affects cattle, tularemia (also known as 'rabbit fever') is not normally fatal to humans. It was considered, however, that the chills, fever and general weakness the disease produced would disable an enemy for two to three weeks. Orginally code-named 'UL'.

PSITTACOSIS: Sometimes known as 'parrot fever', this disease was considered the most powerful of the 'incapacitant' weapons, since it would produce a high fever, rather like typhoid fever, which could later develop into pneumonia. Death could be expected in about 20 per cent of those afflicted. Originally coded 'SI'.

Later many other diseases would be developed for use as weapons, including plague, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Rift Valley fever, Q fever and various forms of encephalomyelitis. But in 1950 these four looked the most promising potential germ weapons. During the next two decades over seven hundred million dollars would be spent on the development of such weapons on the United States, and hundreds of millions more in research and testing projects in America, Britain and Canada.

As to how these disease were to be used in a future war, the Chemical Corps had a list of targets for the Strategic Air Force. The first priority should be major cities. 'The morale of the people in these targets is an all important factor, and will certainly affect a nation's will to fight. Attack on these targets should be directed toward achieving maximum anti-personnel effect with the least amount of destruction.' The attacks should be carried out on a massive scale, to saturate enemy medical facilities. The element of surprise would be enhanced, the Chemical Corps had decided, by the 'insidious nature of the attack as regards detection,
and the period of incubation before symptoms appear.'...

[By the late 1950s, U.S. CBW scientists] had tested the [primary CBW] diseases on laboratory animals, but soon the scientists needed to discover whether what killed a mouse or a monkey would also kill a human. Many of them believed thatthe Russians might already be testing *their* biological weaons on people, and the Chemical Corps were keen to do likewise.

During the Vietnam War, the Fort Detrick [Maryland] researchers found a ready source of human subjects for their experiments in Seventh Day Adventist soldiers, who, because of their conscientious objections, served in the United States army as non-combatants. In one series of tests Seventh Day Adventist soldiers were exposed to airborne tularemia.

According to one report, 'all control subjects developed acute tularemia between two to seven days after exposure', although all were said to have recovered later. This experiment was unusual in that it was written up for public consumption. But the willingness of some at least of the Seventh Day Adventists to take part in such tests was beyond doubt... Numerous other experiments took place with volunteers, and although little is known about their nature, it seems fair to assume that many were more concerned
with developing effective vaccines than with testing the power of the bacteriological weapons themselves.

Evidence as to the use of human volunteers in experiments at Porton Down is harder to come by. Service volunteers were regularly requested during the fifties and sixties, but they are said to have been used only for the testing of defensive precautions like vaccines.

However, between 1960 and 1966 scientists from the Porton Down Microbiological Research Establishment took part in a series of tests in which terminal cancer patients were treated with two rare viruses, at least one of which was then being considered as a possible biological weapon.

The experiments took place at St. Thomas's Hospital, one of London's leading medical schools. According to a report which later appeared in the British Medical Journal, terminal cancer patients were infected with Langat Virus and Kyasanur Forest Disease Virus by two doctors from St. Thomas's Hospital and two scientists from Porton Down. The interest appears to have been in developing a potential vaccine against other diseases transmitted by ticks. The scientists reported that all thirty-three patients died, two of them after contracting encephalitis, an infection causing inflammation and swelling of the brain. 'Transient therapeutic benefit was observed in only four patients', they reported... [FN: Webb, Wetherley-Mein, Gordon Smith and McMahon "Leukaemia and Neoplastic Proces treated with Langat and Kyasanur Forest Disease Viruses: a clinical and laboratory study of 28 patients", British Medical Journal (29 January 1966), pp. 258-66.]

...[I]n the United States, the biological warfare work continued unabated. To many military scientists there the very arguments which made the idea of protecting the population impossible made bacteria increasingly attractive weapons for use against an enemy.

At the start of the so-called 'Camelot' era of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, a thorough-going review of 150 areas of American defense was ordered. Project 112 arrived in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in May 1961, requesting an assessment of American preparations for biological and chemical warfare. ...Not surprisingly their report found that American preparations were inadequate, but that with the expenditure of four thousand million [four billion] dollars, they could be improved...

An initial twenty million dollars was immediately set aside for expanding the biological weapons plant in Arkansas [Pine Bluff Arsenal]. A new testing center was established. [The Deseret Test Center in Utah.] Money was spent developing new weapons to attack plants. And two new debilitating diseases, Q-fever and tularemia, entered the inventory of American
biological weapons....

The results of the continuing research could be seen in the maps of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, parts of which were marked 'permanent bio-contaminated area', after anthrax experiments in the mid-sixties. In the Pacific more tests were carried out with 'hot' agents--the jargon for real biological weapons--on a number of deserted islands. The results of these tests are still classified on the grounds that they reveal weaknesses in American defenses. By March 1967 Fort Detrick had developed a bacteriological warhead for the Sergeant missile, capable of delivering disease up to 100 miles behind enemy lines.

[Amethystfretchen]

Last chapter from source linked above:

U.S. POLITICS, PRAGMATISM, AND BIOLOGICAL WAR
by Terry Allen

[From CovertAction Quarterly N. 43 (Winter 1992-93), p. 14.]


When the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) came into force, the whole world should have issued a collective sigh of relief. It was, after all, a "model treaty," the first international agreement to ban to possession, as well as the use, of a whole class of weapons of mass dectruction. The BWC was completed in 1972. By 1991, 114 countries, including the US, were parties and an additional 23 had signed but not yet ratified. The treaty categorized biological warfare (CBW) as "repugnant to the conscience of mankind."[1]

But as the possible use of anthrax as a weapon in Zimbabwe only three years later illustrates, the conscience of the world is flexible. After all, the sheer cost-effective utility of CBW agents for spreading death, economic devastation, intimidation, and terror is hard to resist. And, truth be told, from the beginning, the banning of CBW has less to do with morality than with the fact that this class of weapons is cheap, deadly, and within the technological and economic reach of the less, as well as the more, technically developed nations.

On November 26, 1969, while using napalm and Agent Orange in Indochina, the US suddenly began advocating a ban on BW. "Biological weapons,"[2] said President Nixon, "have massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences. They may produce global epidemics and impair the health of future generations."[3]

It is likely that the Nixon declarations against CBW were made less from humanitarian concern than from reasons of military strategy.[4] In the 1970s, the Pentagon was advancing the doctrine that while these agents were not militarily useful to the United States, they could proliferate to become the "poor man's atomic bomb." In ther words, Third World nations could produce biological weapons of mass destruction more cheaply than nuclear, chemical, or even many conventional weapons.

Recent advances in technology have increased the danger of BW. Genetic engineering provides the potential to develop highly sophisticated biological agents, possibly including organisms with specific racial predilections.[5] "It is now possible to synthesize BW agents tailored to military specification. The technology that makes possible 'designer drugs' also makes possible 'designer BW,'" testified Douglas J. Feith, deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 1986.[6]

Recognizing the potential threat to its national security, the US has become increasingly concerned that other countries might be conducting prohibited research and developing new genetically engineered organisms or toxins. The political selectivity of this concern was evident during the Gulf War when the US launched a major propaganda campaign against possible Iraqi use of both chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax, against US troops. When chemical attacks had been aimed at unarmed Kurdish villages by Iraq, the US had remained virtually silent. But after "US ally Saddam" was transformed overnight into "another Hitler Saddam," the use of chemical weapons "against his own people" became an issue.

Assessing charges--including those lodged by Cuba and Nicaragua against the US--of biological weapons use are problematic since the agents cause naturally-occurring diseases. Cuba charged that the US used various biological warfare agents against it, including dengue fever against humans, other agents against the tobacco and sugar crops, and African swine fever against pigs--500,000 of which had to be slaughtered in 1971 to prevent spread of the disease. Several unnamed CIA employees and Cuban refugees provided details of the transfer of Swine Fever from the US into Cuba.[7] In 1985, Nicaragua claimed the US had deliberately spread dengue fever virus as part of its war effort.[8]

In the case of the 1978-80 Zimbabwe anthrax epidemic, there exists a highly sugestive body of evidence supported by epidemiological research, and by the logic of the historical and political context. It points to an extensive, coordinated campaign of anthrax dissemination by the Zimbabwean government. If this conclusion is correct, the sigh of relief from those around the treaty table will be lost once again in the cries of those who succumbed no less horribly because the cause of death was a violation of international standards.
--------

NOTES:
[1] From the text of Biological Warfare Convention, completed on April 10,
1972, and signed and ratified by the US and dozens of other nations in
1975.
[2] The use of living organisms or their biologically active products to
cause illness or death in humans, animals, or plants.
[3] W.J. Stoessel, et al., "Report of the Chemical Warfare Commission,"
Appendix E (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office,1985), pp. 90-91.
[4] Raymond Zilinskas, "Verification of the Biological Weapons Convention,"
in Ernhard Geissler, "Biological and Toxic Weapons Today," (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986), p. 87.
[5] Charles Piller and Keith Yamamoto, "Gene Wars: Military Control Over
the New Genetic Technologies," (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1988), pp.
99-100; Carl A. Larson, "Ethnic Weapons," Military Review (Fort
Leavenworth, Kan.), November 1970, pp. 3-11; and Tim Beardsley, "New View
From the Pentagon," Nature, September 4, 1986, p. 5.
[6] Piller and Yamamoto, op. cit., p. 16.
[7] Drew Featherston and John Cummings, "CIA Linked to 1971 Swine Virus in
Cuba," Washington Post, January 9, 1977 p. 2; and Piller and Yamamoto, op


regards
amethystfrechtchen

[Mastermind]

Also, a well documented case of use of salmonella as a weapon was recently performed in the Dalles area of central Oregon in 1986;
From the Article @http://home.att.net/~meditation/bioterrorist.html
In a bizarre plot to take over local government, followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh poisoned salad bars in 10 restaurants in The Dalles in 1984, sickening 751 people with salmonella bacteria. Forty-five of whom were hospitalized. It is still the largest germ warfare attack in U.S. history.
The cult reproduced the salmonella strain and slipped it into salad dressings, fruits, vegetables and coffee creamers at the restaurants. They also were suspected of trying to kill a Wasco County executive by spiking his water with a mysterious substance. Later, Jefferson County District Attorney Michael Sullivan also became ill after leaving a cup of coffee unattended while Rajneeshees lurked around the courthouse.
Now a Deschutes County Circuit Court judge, Sullivan said it was never proved he was poisoned, but a Rajneesh doctor said he was one of the targets. Sullivan worries Americans have forgotten the lessons of the Rajneeshees. The Rajneesh attack “tells us it has happened and can happen again. But I’ve been thinking that we as a community and as a state have forgotten what happened,” he said. "

Part that is not mentioned here is that they attempted to poison the loacal a previous to this successful attack. But, no one got sick on the first try although they had contaminated just about every salad bar in town in one day. Again, biological weapon proved unreliable due to unknown or unplanned for variables. Again, if the weapon can not be relied upon, most commanders will not use it in their planning as a prime weapon. Bio/Chem is an excellent harrassing weapon and a demoralizing weapon, most certainly. I think anthrax is probably the closest anyone has come to a reliable weapon...but the long term contamination of anthrax spores is something most conventional military planners would want to avoid. As for the unconventional, such as we face now with terrorists, there may be no such misgiving since they generally do not plan on occupying the terrain they attack...they only intend to demoralize their opponents populations. Regardless of their reputation for ineffective use or their unreliablitiy, I think such weapons must be given a fairly high priority in defensive plans.

[Auzzzie]

Dont have many details, but about 1000 Aussie volunteers were exposed to mustard gas, because the allies knew Japan had used gas in china atleast, and needed to know more about how mustard gas would work in the tropics.

I think they found that Mustard gas was 25% more potent in a tropical environment.

Think it happened\started in 1942 BTW

Yeah, I've heard of that. I had no idea why they volunteered, but they probably wish they didn't, because it ****ed a lot of them up pretty badly.

[lspab]

Use of bioweapons in WW2; besides the well known Japanese campaigns that used plague, cholera and salmonella (which resulted in 10000 Japanese casualties), there were also allegations that the USSR used Francisella tularensis (Rabbit Fever) against German units outside of Stalingrad in 1942. Medical records at the time indicate there was a very high rate (>70%) incidence of the pulmonary form of the disease, not of the usual type which was spread through animal bites or contact with infected meat, fluids. Ken Alibeck claimed this was instrumental in slowing an advance down. Modern historians suggest it was a natural occurence, with the high incidence of pulminary infection explained by the use by soldiers (of both sides) of straw in their bedding. Whatever, Tularemia became a much researched weapon in the Soviet arsenal.

As for why bioweapons were not widely used: Prior to WW2, the two countries with most experience were the USSR and Japan, with active research programs from the early 1920s. The UK, US, Canada and Germany didn't start programs until the mid 1930s. Crude programs existed during WW1, but these were mostly anti-agriculture/animal type projects (eg German plots to infect US Army mules with Anthrax). The closest anyone got then to an anti-personnel weapon was the US, who briefly considered ricin-tipped bullets. Besides the technical difficulties, ethical considerations stopped that programme (because there was no antidote or treatment for ricin poisoning).

In WW2, the German bioprogram only numbered 50-100 scientists, and appears to be almost entirely defensive in nature. The UK/Canada concentrated on crop/agriculture weapons; the anthrax developed was designed to be distributed as cakes to be eaten by cattle (Gruinard Island is now entirely decontaminated). No serious thought to an anthrax bomb was made until quite late in the war. The anthrax weapons was developed because of a perceived threat that the Germans were developing Foot and Mouth virus as a weapon (incorrect). The US policy was somewhat similar to the British policy, though from 1944, some consideration was was made to antipersonnel applications.


The USSR and Japan were different. The USSR certainly had great expertiise in plague etc, since this was endemic in many parts; Alibek had received decorations while in Soviet service in dealing with a natural outbreak. Japan clearly had no qualms in using bioweapons, though their effectiveness is questionable.

This website is fascinating:
http://www.himvoiska.narod.ru/

Basically it suggests that Soviet doctrine was quite different from the West, which pursued a mostly defensive program, or viewed the weapons as "terrible". Bioweapons were considered a normal part of the Soviet arsenal. Hence the storage of large amounts, in a ready form, right into the 1990s.

Fascinating; lots of info there, including a Soviet perspective on the history of biowarfare.

Another interesting read into the history of these weapons:
http://www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/bw_20th_c.pdf

Alibek's statement (with reference to the alleged WW2 use) to the JEC in 1998:
http://www.house.gov/jec/hearings/intell/alibek.htm

An interesting retort:
http://www.niad.susx.ac.uk/Units/spru/hsp/Geissler.pdf

USAMRIID's Blue Book though still considers this a man-made outbreak.

http://www.niad.susx.ac.uk/Units/spru/hsp/Geissler.pdf

[IraGlacialis]

Too inhumane and immoral to the West I suppose? Also, like Mastermind said, the more conventional weapons were far more effective and "humane" than chemical or biological weapons.
Yes it would be. Considering both are banned by the Geneva Convention, which most nations abide by.
Besides the fears of terrorists using bio and chem weapons, there are now fears of nanotechnology being used as weaponry by the developed nations in the not-so-distant future. This ranges from simple carbon nano-particles (namely buckyballs) that are small enough to get in through the skin and respitory system to cause damage, all the way to the feared "Grey Goo".

[James]

The Nazis used poison gas in the death camps.