AHC: Biowarfare on WWII Eastern Front?

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get Biowarfare used on the WWII eastern Front?

Also, would Churchill want to start BW/CW on the Western Front if the Germans did not do so?

I'm actually trying to come up with a TL where both of the following conditions hold
1) The Germans lose a recognizable WWII (no 10 years later AngloAmerican/Nazi war)
2) No Soviet Troops make it fighting into Germany.

I figure the easiest way to do that is to have something *truly* nasty in BW spread on the Eastern Front.
 
I don't think either side had much of a biological weapons program. Pretty much the only two powers in WW2 to run a biowar project were the British and Japanese.
 
There are unconfirmed stories that the Russians did use biowarfare - specifically, tularemia. It's more likely to have been a coincidental outbreak, though.

Still, the Russian are probably the best bet. They have a bioweapons program, albeit a primitive one. As far as I know - and please correct me if I'm mistaken - the Nazis did not. Chemical weapons, yes, bio, no.
 
Aside from Stalingrad or Leningrad, did they have the population density to make airborne chemical/ biological weapons viable?
Did micro-climates (e.g. valley winds) favour gas-like weapons?

How about leaving flea-infested garments in abandoned buildings as you retreat?
 
Aside from Stalingrad or Leningrad, did they have the population density to make airborne chemical/ biological weapons viable?
Did micro-climates (e.g. valley winds) favour gas-like weapons?

How about leaving flea-infested garments in abandoned buildings as you retreat?

You dont need really big cities for effective biowarfare. Refugee trains and troops in close quarters with poor access to hygiene make decent targets.
 
there was the Pripet Marshes where a huge number of resistance hid, a target zone for any flea-borne weapon.

although my opinion the most effective weapons would have targeted crops.
 
There are unconfirmed stories that the Russians did use biowarfare - specifically, tularemia. It's more likely to have been a coincidental outbreak, though.

Still, the Russian are probably the best bet. They have a bioweapons program, albeit a primitive one. As far as I know - and please correct me if I'm mistaken - the Nazis did not. Chemical weapons, yes, bio, no.

Like most things in Nazi Germany, some people were researching something without much coordination. Or so I renember. Erich Traub
was doing some serious research on animal disease. Kurt_Blome worked on concentration camp inmates. Just two examples, I am sure there were others. They were also apparently looking into releasing malaria infected mosquitos into enemy territory. It happened under this guy Eduard_May (no-english wikipedia article available for him).
 
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Like most things in Nazi Germany, some people were researching something without much coordination. Or so I renember. Erich Traub
was doing some serious research on animal disease. Kurt_Blome worked on concentration camp inmates. Just two examples, I am sure there were others. They were also apparently looking into releasing malaria infected mosquitos into enemy territory.

Yes, Blome and the others seemingly managed a disjointed effort that was relatively poorly funded compared to other projects. His information still managed to get him off. In all honesty I think you would need a much greater threat of the major powers going biological on each others cities for funding resources to really be there or something to happen to think the war would go biochem soon back in 40-41.

As part of the Nazi biological warfare program code-named 'Blitzableiter' (Lightning Rod), Blome's Institute was therefore "a camouflaged operation for the production of biological warfare agents", and its construction was overseen by Karl I. Gross, an S.S. officer and specialist in tropical diseases, who had conducted lethal experiments on 1,700 prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp. It was surrounded by ten-foot high wall, guarded by a special S.S. unit, and designed to prevent the accidental release of the various biological agents being produced there. By May 1944, the Institute had sections devoted physiology-biology, bacteriology and vaccines, radiology, pharmacology, cancer statistics and a tumor farm, and had received at least 2.7 million Reichsmarks in funding from the Wehrmacht and S.S. in 1943-45.

Blome worked on methods of storage and dispersal of biological agents like plague, cholera, anthrax, and typhoid, and also infected prisoners with plague in order to test the efficacy of vaccines. At the University of Strassburg, a "special unit" headed by Prof. Eugen von Haagan and employing researchers like Kurt Gutzeit and Arnold Dohmen, tested typhus, hepatitis, nephritis, and other chemical and biological weapons on concentration camp inmates. Gutzeit was in charge of hepatitis research for the German Army, and he and his colleagues carried out virus experiments on mental patients, Jews, Russian POWs and Gypsies in Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and other locations. In October 1944, Himmler also ordered Blome to experiment with plague on concentration camp prisoners.

Blome also worked on aerosol dispersants and methods of spraying nerve agents like Tabun and Sarin from aircraft, and tested the effects of these gases on prisoners at Auschwitz. Originally, I.G. Farben had developed nerve gas in 1936 as a result of its research into insecticides, and Blome's duties included preparing defensive measures against possible Allied use of insect-borne biological weapons, either in a first strike or in retaliation for German use of such weapons. As early as September 1940, Wolfram Sievers, director of the S.S. Ahnenerbe Institute, had warned Blome of the need to expand the production of insecticides to deal with this eventuality.

Blome was arrested on 17 May 1945 by an agent of the United States Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC, an army intelligence service) in Munich. He had had no papers except his driving licence.

It is believed that American intervention saved Blome from the gallows in exchange for information about biological warfare, nerve gas, and providing advice on to the American chemical and biological weapons programs. In November 1947, two months after his Nuremberg acquittal, Blome was interviewed by four representatives from Camp Detrick, Maryland, including Dr. H.W. Batchelor, in which he "identified biological warfare experts and their location and described different methods of conducting biological warfare." In 1951, he was hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps under Project 63, one of the successors to Operation Paperclip, to work on chemical warfare. His file neglected to mention Nuremberg.

He was not arrested or charged with war crimes again after his acquittal at the Nuremberg Doctor's Trial in 1947. He also continued to practice medicine in West Germany, and was active in politics as a member of the right-wing Germany Party. He died in Dortmund in 1969.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Blome
 
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