HITLER AND BIOTECHNOLOGY- Ultimate killing machine
Hitler’s scientists planned to use malaria-infected mosquitoes as biological weapons by sending them behind enemy lines in the Second World War, according to research.
SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered secret research into how insects infected with the disease could be kept alive long enough to be used against the allies, German academic Dr Klaus Reinhardt has claimed.
In January 1942, the SS chief created a special laboratory at Dachau concentration camp with the official aim of finding new remedies against diseases transmitted by lice and other insects, as well as the typhoid that plagued German troops.
But in the journal Endeavour, Reinhardt said records kept by Dachau Entomological Institute revealed its scientists also pursued research into biological warfare.
They tested the life spans of different mosquito breeds to try and find one that would remain alive long enough to be dropped into enemy territory.
At the end of the trials in 1944 a breed of anopheles mosquito, particularly effective in transmitting malaria to humans, was recommended by the director of the institute, according to Reinhardt, from Germany's Tuebingen University.
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It is not known whether there was a connection between the work of the Entomological Institute and the chilling experiments carried out by Dr Claus Schilling who used prisoners as human guinea pigs deliberately infecting them with malaria.
Schilling was sentenced to death by hanging after the war.
The mosquito research had to remain secret because Germany, alongside the allied nations, had signed up to the 1925 Geneva protocol banning the use of biological and chemical weapons.
But Reinhardt dismissed the project as "a bizarre mix of Himmler's smattering of scientific knowledge, personal paranoia, an esoteric world view, and genuine concerns about his SS troops" which proved of no use to Hitler’s war effort
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