WI: Operation Vegetarian is executed and succeeds?

CalBear

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Yeah, I think that the whole white powder Anthrax circus has made people drastically overstate the deadliness of Anthrax. Anthrax was weaponised because it's spores can be safely and easily be warehoused for years in bombs and artillery shells, so it fit well into the military logistics chain, not because it's very deadly. Plus the original plan was to air-drop Linseed cakes to be eaten by cattle. Yeah the cattle will die, which will cause starvation in Germany ,but elementary public sanitation will prevent a human epidemic.

EDIT. Plus, I don't think it would take the Germans long to do some lab tests and figure out what's in the cakes that are being dropped by heavy bombers.
I wouldn't bet on that. Anthrax is actually very, very hard to kill. It can spore up for a long time waiting for the correct conditions. Treatment is possible, but the Reich can't do it, all they have are 1st Generation Sulfa drugs and they are ineffective.

Anthrax infected animals that are slaughtered and consumed are also highly infectious. One of the most recent human outbreaks was in 2010 in the Philippines. 400 people were infected from one water buffalo carcass (don't know if it was some BBQ or what other group circumstances). Even with medical intervention two of them died (fortunately Cipro is literally cheap as dirt, otherwise the toll would have been higher).

Germany won't look like the 14th Century Black Death, but the death toll would be fairly impressive, even by WW II standards. It will also be poisoned as far as agricultural use for generations.
 
Yeah, I think that the whole white powder Anthrax circus has made people drastically overstate the deadliness of Anthrax. Anthrax was weaponised because it's spores can be safely and easily be warehoused for years in bombs and artillery shells, so it fit well into the military logistics chain, not because it's very deadly. Plus the original plan was to air-drop Linseed cakes to be eaten by cattle. Yeah the cattle will die, which will cause starvation in Germany ,but elementary public sanitation will prevent a human epidemic.
This. The cattle cakes are the critical point - you aren't dropping weaponised spores over cities where they will be breathed in, but cattle cakes over agricultural areas. Anthrax was also not an unknown disease to the Germans - it cropped up occasionally and they knew not to eat diseased animals. Anglo-American/Nazi war this is not - very different delivery method.

Of course, the effects are pretty awful nevertheless - not only do the Germans lose most of their food animals (hence the name of the operation), but a lot (most?) of their ploughing used oxen. They're gone too, and they don't have the ability to build enough tractors to replace them without cutting into tank production - something Hitler will never do.

This means mass starvation, and given the way the German high command thought (we're invading the Soviet Union and don't have enough transport to supply and feed our troops, so we'll seize all our food from the locals and let them starve to death) the famine is almost certain to be in the occupied countries.
 
Well the 1942 Vegetarian was mostly about causing famine, the direct deaths were just ancillary to its purpose. Remember that Germany was under a RN blockade during WW2 so losing its cattle stocks likely would cause starvation. Certainly big swaths of fertile German farmland would become uninhabitable and the Nazi's would face a dramatic food shortage, which would again be exacerbated by the blockade (the question is how much could they pull from the rest of Europe to feed themselves, because obviously the Nazi's would be willing to starve the rest of Europe to feed themselves, the issue is the logistics of whether the food supplys from the rest of Europe could make up the gap). It also depends whether the original Vegetarian (ie the linseed cakes in 1942) which likely would not cause a lot of direct deaths, and would mainly have their effect by contaminating livestock and farmland or if this is the 1944 anthrax bombs the British got the Americans to mass produce and then send to them to be filled with Anthrax. By 1944 the UK has a terrifying large amount of highly virulent anthrax and with an American made and mass produced delivery system, this is truly an arsenal that could flat out wipe Germany off the map just as effectively as nuclear bombardment. Of course by 1944 in OTL there wasn't the need to bring such weapons into service, but if you have a TL where Germany is somehow still a danger to the survival of the UK in 1944, then perhaps the UK will deploy the Anthrax. Anthrax bombs would be a killer weapon and leave Germany a toxic wasteland. Of note, even the cattle cake anthrax would cause big areas of Germany to be unfit for human occupation for a long time, so the effects on Germany of even an early, unsophisticated anthrax strike would be pretty enduring (ie. it took decades to decontaminate the UK test site, Gruinard Island)
 
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Anthrax infected animals that are slaughtered and consumed are also highly infectious. One of the most recent human outbreaks was in 2010 in the Philippines. 400 people were infected from one water buffalo carcass (don't know if it was some BBQ or what other group circumstances). Even with medical intervention two of them died (fortunately Cipro is literally cheap as dirt, otherwise the toll would have been higher).

I would bet the carcass infected the water supply, which is another thing that could happen to the Germans, with animals dying around water sources and potentially contaminating groundwater supplies.

This article even states that anthrax in water sources can survive standard water treatment procedures, which could make an infected water supply even more of a problem.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060226115234.htm
 
I read somewhere that this plan could be implemented in 1942. the earliest. If it were implemented then or even in 1943., that means the Germans will have more than enough retaliatory capability against the UK, as the LW is still fairly strong.

Could the US be attacked with V-1 missiles launched from a long-range aircraft like the BV222/238? The missiles are set to drop any captured cakes.

If yes, then basically the entire First World is doomed.:eek: Rapid Third World renaissance anyone?
 
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