ZGram - 10/30/2001 - "Anthrax: Then and now"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 30, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Just now I read that Anthrax spores have been detected in the FDA facilities.

Biological terrorism is not a Bin Laden invention.  I have briefly
mentioned before that as part of a campaign of aerial terrorism by the
Allies during World War II, Winston Churchill proposed to release deadly
anthrax spores over six German cities.

Only today did I find out that the cities selected--Aachen, Wilhelmshaven,
Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin--would afford 538 square miles of
built-up areas for the ghastly operation, which was calculated to require a
total 570,280 anthrax bombs for success.

Here, in a timely article , a prestigious British newspaper reveals some of
the shocking details of one of the most depraved, fiendish and CRIMINAL
schemes ever conceived by the sick minds who once waged war against Adolf
Hitler.

UK planned to wipe out Germany with anthrax
Allies' World War Two shame

 Sunday Herald, London, 14th October 2001

 By GEORGE ROSIE

 AS THE world recoils at the horrific possibility of al-Qaeda terrorists
waging anthrax war against United States citizens, the Sunday Herald can
reveal that Britain manufactured five million anthrax cattle cakes during
the Second World War and planned to drop them on Germany in 1944.

 The aim of Operation Vegetarian was to wipe out the German beef and dairy
herds and then see the bacterium spread to the human population.  With
people then having no access to antibiotics, this would have caused many
thousands--perhaps even millions--of German men, women and children to
suffer awful deaths.

 The anthrax cakes were tested on Gruinard Island, off Wester Ross, which
was finally cleared of contamination in 1990.  Operation Vegetarian was
planned for the summer of 1944 but, in the event, it was abandoned as the
Allies' Normandy invasion progressed successfully.

 Details of the wartime secret operation are contained in a series of War
Office files (WO 188) at the Public Record Office in Kew.  Some of the
files are still classified.

 The man whose task was to carry out Operation Vegetarian was Dr Paul
Fildes, director of the biology department at Porton Down near Salisbury in
Wiltshire.  Fildes had previously been in charge of the Medical Research
Council's bacterial chemistry unit at Middlesex Hospital.

 In early 1942, Fildes began searching Britain for suppliers and
manufacturers of linseed-oil cattle cake to make five million small cakes.
Large quantities of the bacillus itself had to be produced, while special
containers to carry the cattle cakes had to be designed and made.  Some RAF
bombers had to be modified to deliver the anthrax-infected payload. And all
of it had to be done as cheaply as possible.

 The raw material for the cake was provided by the Olympia Oil & Cake
Company in Blackburn. The contract to cut the cattle cake into small pieces
went to J & E Atkinson of Bond Street in London, perfumers and toilet-soap
manufacturers and suppliers to the royal family.

 The Atkinsons calculated that they could produce 180,000 to 250,000 cakes,
each 2.5cm in diameter and 10 grammes in weight, in a 44-hour week.  The
price was to be between 12 and 15 shillings per thousand .

 The firm pledged to deliver 5,273,400 cakes by April 1943. By the middle
of July 1942, the Atkinsons informed Fildes that 'we are now producing at
the rate of 40,000 per day'.

 The anthrax was manufactured by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
at its veterinary laboratory in Surrey. An Oxford academic named Dr E
Schuster was set to work devising the pump to inject the bacilli into the
cattle cakes.  The Porton Down scientists settled on cube-shaped cardboard
containers, 18cm square, to carry the infected foodstuff.

 Each held 400 cakes. They would be fitted with a steel handle 'of a size
which enables the operator to grasp the handle without difficulty when
wearing thick leather or moleskin gloves . . . '  Thirteen women were then
recruited from various soap-making firms, sworn to secrecy and given the
job of injecting the cattle cakes with anthrax spores.  At the same time,
Fildes and his team were working on the best way to deliver the diseased
cattle feed to the German herds.

 The RAF's research unit came up with a simple solution-- easily made
wooden trays that fitted on to aircraft flare chutes. Their Bomber Command
Lancasters, Halifaxes and Stirlings were chosen for the job.

 By the beginning of 1944, Operation Vegetarian was ready to go.  It was
crucial to mount any attack in the summer months.

 Fildes said: 'The cattle must be caught in the open grazing fields when
lush spring grass is on the wane.'  'Trials have shown that these tablets .
. . are found and consumed by the cattle in a very short time.  'Cattle are
concentrated in the northern half of Oldenburg and northwest Hanover.
Aircraft flying to and from Berlin will fly over 60 miles of grazing land.'

 Fildes calculated that, at an average ground speed of 300mph, the distance
would be covered in 18 minutes.  'If one box of tablets is dispersed every
two minutes, then each aircraft will be required to carry and disperse
nine, or say 10, boxes.'

 One Lancaster bomber returning from a raid on Berlin would be able to
scatter 4000 anthrax-infected cakes over a 60-mile swathe in less than 20
minutes.  A dozen aircraft would have been enough to litter most of the
north German countryside with anthrax spores. Operation Vegetarian was a
seriously deadly project.

 But, by the time Fildes's operation was ready to go in the summer of 1944,
the Normandy invasion had taken place and Allied armies were crashing
through northern France and up through Italy.  The war against Nazi Germany
was instead being won by conventional means.  At the end of 1945, five
million anthrax-infected cattle cakes were incinerated in one of Porton
Down's furnaces.

[END]

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Thought for the Day:

The David Irving's website posted this link

http://www.isayeret.com/civi/gallery1.htm

(The last two pictures on the gallery one , and the first two on gallery 3
are very upsetting)

(Sent to the Zundelsite)